History of Modern Drama, Volume II

David Krasner is Professor and Dean of the School of the Arts at Dean College in Franklin, Massachusetts. He is the author and  editor of numerous books on modern drama, African American theatre, dramatic theory and criticism, and acting, including A History of Modern Drama: Volume I (2012), and Theatre in Theory: An Anthology (editor, 2008), both published by Wiley Blackwell.

• Preface and Acknowledgments ixPart I: Introduction 1Chapter 1 Strangers More than Ever: Modern Drama and Alternative Modernities 3Part II: United Kingdom and Ireland 47Chapter 2 Jewish Oedipus, Jewish Ethics: Harold Pinter and Postmodern Philosophy 49Chapter 3 Tom Stoppard and the Limits of Empiricism 92Chapter 4 Caryl Churchill, Monetarism, and the Feminist Dilemma 119Chapter 5 “Can’t Buy Me Love”: Socialism, Working Class Sensibilities, and Modern British Drama 139Chapter 6 Between Past and Present: Brian Friel’s “Symbolic Middle Ground” 186Part III: United States 205Chapter 7 “Participate, I suppose”: Edward Albee and the Specter of Death 207Chapter 8 “Ask a Criminal”: White Postmodern Manhood in David Mamet and Sam Shepard 225Chapter 9 Modern Drama, Modern Feminism, and Postmodern Motherhood 254Chapter 10 History, Reinvention, and Dialectics: African American Drama and August Wilson 279Chapter 11Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: Postmodern Ethics in the Age of Reagan 301Part IV: Western and Eastern Europe 319Chapter 12 Post‐War, Cold War, and Post‐Cold War: Marxism, Post‐Totalitarianism, and European Drama in the Postmodern Era 321Chapter 13 Eastern Europe, Totalitarianism, and the Wooden Words 353Part V: Postcolonial Drama 387Chapter 14 The Fragmentation of the Self in Postcolonial Drama 389Chapter 15 Africa: Wole Soyinka, Athol Fugard, and Christina Ama Ata Aidoo 401Chapter 16 Central and South America: Carlos Fuentes and Derek Walcott 417Chapter 17 Asia and the Middle East: Yukio Mishima, Gao Xingjian, Girish Karnad, Hanoch Levin, and SaaDallah Wannous 429Chapter 18 Canada: Ann‐Marie MacDonald and Judith Thompson 449Part VI: Nihilism at the Door 459Chapter 19 Crisis of Values and Loss of Center in the Plays of Martin McDonagh and Sarah Kane 461Chapter 20 Blasted, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, and Phaedra’s Love 477Chapter 21 Pushing More Boundaries: Children and Desire 493Notes 500Index 567

David Krasner’s A History of Modern Drama, Volume II: 1960–2000 offers… a structural and technique-based approach to differentiating dramatic eras. In his sequel to A History of Modern Drama, Volume I, Krasner shifts focus from dividing drama by time periods (i.e., “modern” and “contemporary”) to categorizing dramatic eras according to their use of different formal techniques (i.e., “modern” and “postmodern”). This is an important distinction, as book-length studies on postmodern drama are few. Krasner’s Volume II makes this scholarly move feel like a logical step and a natural conclusion. This book will reinvigorate the study of postmodernism and drama. This is a worthy and important volume that should be read by anyone who teaches theatre history and/or modern and postmodern drama courses.- Michael Y. Bennett, Modern Drama